Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 Review A Hardcore Homage

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 Review – A Hardcore Homage

Curse of the Moon 2 is a longer, more challenging, and more fully-featured game than its prequel, providing a truly old-school Castlevania experience.

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Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 Review A Hardcore Homage

Somehow, Koji Igarashi’s crowdfunded Bloodstained project has already morphed into its own series. Before the launch of the long-awaited Ritual of the Night last year, Igarashi teamed up with Inti Creates to develop a prequel game as a Kickstarter stretch goal. That game became Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, an 8-bit throwback to the original Castlevania titles on the NES. It was an earnest and enjoyable tribute to classic Castlevania, but it didn’t last very long and its relative ease left veterans wanting. Now Inti Creates has released Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 and thoroughly addressed both complaints about length and on difficulty. Curse of the Moon 2 is a longer, more challenging and fully-featured game than its prequel, providing a substantial and uncompromising experience for old-school Castlevania fans.

The premise is almost identical to the first game, albeit with some key differences. The Demon Tower has arisen once again, bringing with it the hordes of the underworld. The returning swordsman Zangetsu resolves to scale the tower, slay as many demons as possible, and destroy their overlord. However, the story is slightly more involved this time: the church exorcist Dominique, who was infamous for her role in Ritual of the Night, has been reworked for Curse of the Moon 2 and serves as Zangetsu’s first playable ally in his quest. The two meet up with other unique playable allies as they fight their way through the tower, forging deeper bonds with one another across multiple episodes.

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Like its predecessor, Curse of the Moon 2 has meticulously emulated the feeling of 8-bit Castlevania gameplay. The stiff but satisfying action-platforming will immediately click with those who played the earliest Castlevania titles, but it will likely take some getting used to for everyone else. Curse of the Moon 2 puts its own spin on many of the recognizable weapons, enemies and traps of its source material, even recreating combat scenarios like “vertical platforming while avoiding flying helmets” and “infinitely spawning frogs from the sky.” It’s not a simple matter of copy-and-paste, though. Curse of the Moon 2’s designers have leveraged their knowledge of old-school Castlevania to create cunning obstacles of their own, resulting in a much more challenging and gratifying game that feels like a long-lost NES classic.

Bloodstained Curse of the Moon 2 Review A Hardcore Homage

Curse of the Moon 2 also expands dramatically on the branching level design and multiple outcomes of the first game. The levels now rival those of the best 2D Sonic games in terms of size, but the player will never see everything a level has to offer on just the first run. The various traversal abilities of each playable character open up dozens of branching paths, leading to never-before-seen rooms and making every level feel appreciably different each time you play it. The game offers plenty of reasons to replay these levels, too – its unlockable episodes continue the story even after “finishing” it for the first time and challenge your mastery of characters, levels, and bosses in new ways. Local co-op is also a great addition, allowing players to hone their skills with their favorite character without needing to switch manually for platforming or combat.

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There are a few persistent problems with Curse of the Moon 2, however. Specifically, the health and checkpoint systems feel backwards. Each playable character still has their own separate health bar, and any time one of them dies, the player is sent back to the previous screen. Not only do they have to make their way back through obstacles they’ve already conquered, but they have to do it with one less team member and without any other characters being healed. Far too often, this results in a slow death-by-degrees as the player is stripped of their most crucial abilities. Just choosing to restart from a checkpoint instead can be even more needlessly punishing, since checkpoints are so poorly spaced that they feel virtually useless. Ironically, all of this could have been solved by copying Castlevania III – give characters a single unified health pool and simply put a checkpoint before boss rooms.

All in all, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 is a treat for longtime Castlevania players or anyone else with an interest in retro action-platformers. Fans who are pining for the pre-netroidvania days of the series will find that Curse of the Moon 2 is the best representation of that in a very long time. It still has its needless inconveniences and isn’t shy about wasting time, but this hardcore homage is certainly worth the asking price.

Link Source : https://screenrant.com/bloodstained-curse-of-the-moon-2-game-review/

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